Silent Hill: Corruption
by Sithster
Summary: An eerie silence falls over the Toluca Lake prison, and it is up to correctional officer Diana Henley to find out what happened to everyone inside it...
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Silent Hill: Corruption

Diana looked out from the dingy gray window of her tower. Even after she rubbed the sleeve of her uniform on the glass, her vision was still obscured, so she wrestled the window open and stuck her head out. The air was saturated with moisture. Not raining, but the fog was so thick here you could feel it. Shaking her head, she pulled back inside and sat back on the tall, rusted metal chair that was the only piece of furniture in the place. She was bored out of her mind, but she preferred it this way. Day shift at Toluca Prison was miserable, but working graveyards was bearable with the inmates all snoring away in their cells, out of reach and out of sight. When she pulled tower duty it was freakin' bliss, despite the boredom. All she had to do up here was look out the windows and shoot anyone that tried to get over the wall, and her coworkers tended to forget whoever was up there. That suited her just fine- she was tired of all the office politics, and in all honesty, most of the staff were just as crooked as the inmates. They liked putting her somewhere out of the way so they wouldn't have to investigate reports on all the log discrepancies she'd filed, or have to hide their drug peddling from her inquisitive eyes.

She hadn't worked there long, only a couple of months, but already Diana hated it in Silent Hill. Hoping to land a job as a shift supervisor, instead she found herself back at the bottom of the totem pole after transferring from another facility out in California. She'd regretted that move almost as soon as she'd made it, for not only had the promised promotion not panned out, but she found herself constantly butting heads with her superiors, all of whom were male. It seemed they felt it was their duty to put every female employee in their place, as if their particular type of genitalia somehow affected their job performance.

Perhaps it did, she thought, scowling to herself. Most of the other female officers scoffed at her for being unwilling to unzip her pants for the captains. That was how they'd landed their own cushy positions, after all. Most of them never even had to leave the office for longer than a few minutes, just enough to make it look like they were actually working. Whereas she, and the other staff members not in their special inner circle had to work their tails off in the cold and gloom every night, picking up the slack for those privileged few.

Sighing, she slid from her chair again, too restless to stay in any one place for too long. Grabbing the shotgun off of the rack, she slid the strap over her arm and wandered out onto the narrow catwalk surrounding her post. Leaning on the railing, she peered out into the mist. Rubbing the back of her neck, she shrugged and wondered if it was worth calling Central Control to let them know how badly vision was being obscured out here. Nobody could see very far in this thick a haze, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to see anyone approaching the wall unless they were right in front of the tower. The problem was, there was about a 50/50 chance they'd even answer the phone, once they saw who was calling. Still, she ought to cover her butt and at least try to report it. That way, if something happened the blame couldn't legitimately fall on her head. Not that they wouldn't try, but at least her own conscience would be clean. Reaching through the open window to the little shelf along the wall, she dialed control and put the receiver to her ear. That's funny, there wasn't even a dial tone, nevermind ringing. She smacked the receiver sharply against her palm, but it didn't surprise her that it didn't help. That brand of mechanics only worked in the movies. She hung up and tried a few more times to call, even attempted to call the other towers, but still nothing happened.

"Great, yet another thing that's busted around here," she muttered irritably, reaching for the radio in her hip holster. The only reason she had a hand radio on her was because the people that ran this place were too cheap to replace the base radio. It was that way with a lot of thing, though, when she thought about it. Diana wondered if they gotten around to clearing out the flooding in the lower levels yet. Probably not. She was just waiting for the day when some inmate's family sued them for the abominable living conditions. Then again, the only time the warden seemed willing to dish out cash was to shut people up, so he'd probably just bribe them to keep quiet.

Pressing down on the button, she waited a moment before saying, "Control, be advised, the telephone in tower 4 is down. Do you copy?"

Silence.

She repeated, "Control- do you copy?" Still nothing. Her hands gripped the slick metal railing as she stood there, thinking. Last she'd checked, her radio was working fine. She checked the battery and there were extras in the charger, so she hadn't run out of juice. That wasn't the problem. Perhaps they were having some technical troubles? She hadn't heard the sirens, so it was unlikely they were dealing with any kind of disturbance down there. Her orders stated that she was forbidden from leaving her post until proper relief arrived, or the captain himself ordered it. There was a thought. 

She keyed the radio again. "Captain Emerson, this is Henley in tower 4, do you copy?" Nope, that didn't work either.

"Dammit," she hissed, fighting the urge to slam her radio against the rail. "Have they ALL gone to sleep down there? Somebody say something!" Her eyes raked the surrounding area for any signs of life, but there was nothing, not even the pigeons or crows that frequented the prison. The silence was deafening, to borrow the overused phrase, and it was starting to wind her up. Still, if no one was answering the phone or the radio, what else could she do but listen, watch, and wait for someone to pass by so she could holler at them to get someone up there to fix the equipment. This was the only real drawback to working the night shift- all the maintenance personnel were at home asleep in their beds, and dragging them out of there before morning was a royal pain. Worst came to worst, she could report the problem to the oncoming shift, but she hated to wait that long, for she had another three hours before that rolled around. Anything could happen during that time, and she didn't want to get caught with her pants around her ankles.

It was starting to get colder, so she trudged reluctantly back inside to the dubious comfort of her rusted chair and flipped the switch for the space heater as she wrestled the door back closed. She rummaged in the shelves for some coffee grounds and poured them into a filter, hoping that what she brewed wouldn't kill her. You never knew what quality of coffee you'd get around here.

The hands on the clock moved on with excruciating slowness, until every tick of the second hand had her grinding her teeth with impatience. Five o'clock, six o'clock, and finally seven came and went. Her shift was over and still no radio traffic and the phone refused to work. She'd tried every few minutes to get someone to answer her, but still nothing. With a growl, she grabbed the gun again and stomped outside, yelling at the top of her lungs, "Hey! When am I gonna get some relief up here? Where is everybody?"

A faint rustling noise sounded from below, but she couldn't make out what had caused it, and whatever it was didn't bother repeating itself.

"Well, now what?" she muttered to herself, trying to figure out her next move from there. Something was clearly very wrong. Forget the long silent radio and the broken phone, it was more than a little strange that she hadn't heard hide nor hair of anyone wandering the compound. By now she should have at least heard the rattling of the food cart on its way from the mess hall to the various cell blocks. Or the rattle of the utility officer's keys as they wandered to the warden's office with the janitorial staff in tow. But no. There had been absolutely nothing for hours now, and she needed to do _something_. The problem was, if she left the post to go investigate, that was technically abandoning her post. That brought with it a whole host of potential problems. Unless she ended up having to pull off some kind of dramatic rescue, she would probably be fired, maybe even arrested if they managed to successfully twist her actions into some kind of public endangerment scenario. She doubted they would back her up in court if she told a jury that no one contacted her for hours.

A loud burping sound from inside the tower made her jump. She whipped around to see what had made the noise, and for a moment, thought she had imagined it. Then it came again, and this time she could tell it was the toilet. Frowning, she made her way to the corner of the tower in which it stood, and looked into the rust colored water starting to fill the bowl. The chipped porcelain device was starting to flood, which was weird, since she hadn't even used it recently. Since she hadn't just flushed it, why was it filling up?

Filling up and overflowing, that is. Diana stepped back from the toilet in disgust as filthy water began to spill over the sides and onto the floor. It continued to belch and gurgle, complaining about whatever it was that had clogged it up.

"Maybe this is some kind of divine sign that I should have been a plumber," mumbled Diana, looking around for a plunger. No such luck. First they stick her up here alone with no one to talk to, forget all about her, and now she's got a tower that's rapidly filling up with crap water. Just what she always wanted. She started to holler out the window again when the sight of something amidst all the refuse on the floor cut her short.

Squatting down for a closer look, she was careful not to get any of the sewage on her pants. Riffling through her pockets for something to wipe it off with, she found a pocket pack of facial tissue and pulled out several pieces. Wrinkling her nose, she wiped at the flat square until she could clearly see it was a jewel case with a miniature video disk, the likes of which they put the recordings from the security cameras on. Other than the crap on it, it looked playable if it were washed off. The real poser was what on earth it was doing there in the first place. There was no way it would have fit in the pipes, not intact, anyway. How did it get there? She would have seen it if it had been there earlier though, when she had used it after a couple bottles of soda. It made no sense.

Grabbing another handful of tissues, she picked up the disk. Just then, a low rumble of thunder rolled through the air and the emergency sirens started to go off. She straightened up quickly, pocketing the tissue-wrapped video, and looked out the window. Screw it, no reasonable person would expect her to stay up there where she couldn't see anything, especially if there was an emergency going on. Somebody might need her help. She grabbed the pump-action shotgun with its ten shells and the .22 caliber rifle from the rack and slipped the straps over her shoulder. God willing, she wouldn't need to use them, for if she did, she didn't have much ammo to begin with. Only thirty rounds between the two weapons in all. Maybe if she made her way down to the narrow path between the outer wall and inner fence, she'd meet someone that'd be able to tell her what the hell was going on.

At any rate, she was done waiting. Diana yanked open the trapdoor and climbed quickly but carefully down the ladder into the base of the tower. Her pulse hammered in her throat as she put the key in the lock, pausing for a moment before she turned it. It wasn't in her nature disobey orders, not if they fell within the rules. She'd defied her superiors more than once, but that was always when they tried forcing her to do something illegal or against the facility's 'official' policy. Knowing that the letter of the law was on her side, she'd always been safe from the worst they could direct at her. But this… once she left, she knew they could hang her out to dry and finally have the justification they'd always wanted to get rid of her.

Knowing her conscience could never let her leave her fellows in a dangerous situation kept her moving despite her reservations. Even if they were a bunch of scumbags, she felt honor-bound to protect them as was her duty, even if the rest of them never gave a crap about theirs. She twisted the key in the lock, and with a deep breath, stepped outside. Oddly enough, it was even colder on ground level than it was up top, and she shivered as she locked the tower up behind her.

It was still quiet as she made her way along the gravel path, careful not to stumble into the long rows of razor wire. She didn't know why, but despite the fact that she'd traveled this path many times before, it seemed longer than usual to her. She knew that if she kept following it long enough, she'd end up near the visitation section. The important thing was to try and keep her weapons out of any inmates' reach. At this hour, there was no way there'd be any of them in visitation, and maybe she'd find a working phone. IF she could get inside. Technically, all doors into visitation were supposed to be locked when they weren't supervised, but sometimes the night staff was sloppy and left it unlocked since there wasn't supposed to be anyone in there at night anyway. After all, the inmates had no way to get there without going through several heavy locked steel doors and manned gates. All she knew was that if she managed to get in there and found one of her fellow officers inside, she was going to rip them a new one for not listening to their radio.

When she arrived at the staff entrance to visitation, she found it locked. _Great_, thought Diana, _the one time I want these bozos to be slacking off, they lock me out. Just perfect. _She slumped forward and rested her forehead against the rough exterior wall and closed her eyes and sighed. She didn't really know where to go from there. Nobody had answered her, everything was locked, and she was essentially just as confined as any inmate until someone with the right keys came along. She swore quietly, then slowly opened her eyes in surprise when she noticed the sirens were no longer going off. Pulling away from the wall, she shook her head to clear it. She must be seeing things. There was always mold and mildew on the walls of the prison because of the excessively humid air around Toluca Lake, but this was more than she remembered from the last time she was back in this section of the facility. The walls looked crumbly, but held up solidly when she pushed against them. Her forehead creased. Lackadaisical as most of her coworkers were, it didn't seem normal for the maintenance personnel to let things get this bad. The contamination didn't spread very far, but was instead concentrated in this particular area. Looked like she had another problem to report to the warden. Scratching her scalp, she turned to look at the wall opposite visitation and her eyes widened in shock and anger.

"What the…?" she growled in outrage, stooping to look at the hole in the wall. It was small, but not so small that a slender person couldn't squeeze through if they tried. Adding insult to injury, someone had scrawled graffiti over it in small red letters that said, "doWn the rAbbiT holE- retRace her steps". Some cocky little twerp had escaped and was taunting them, she was sure of it.

The only good thing was, she at least had a faint idea of where to go now. Not being very heavy, Diana knew she could fit through it too. Once outside, she'd stand a better chance of making it back in through the front gate and reporting the hole to her superiors. She slid the guns from her shoulder and placed them on the ground beside the hole, pulling herself through with a great deal of unladylike grunting and cursing. She pulled the weapons out after her in case there were any hostiles about, not wanting them to take them from her while she squirmed to the other side. Once they were safely back on her person, she picked her way across the rocky ground in the direction of the front gate.

Too late she saw the yawning chasm in the earth and stumbled over the edge. Quick reflexes and a strong grip were the only things that kept her from being dashed to pieces on a bottom she couldn't even see. "Where'd the ground go?" she yelled in a panic, carefully hauling herself back over the ledge. She lay there for a moment, reeling from the shock and catching her breath, silently cursing the infernal fog that kept her from seeing the massive hole.

"H-how did that get there?" she gasped to no one in particular, grateful that neither of the guns had fallen. Standing on shaky legs, she looked carefully back at the hole in frightened puzzlement. Whatever had made this, she should have heard it back in her tower. But there'd been no explosion, no beeping or rumbling of construction machinery. Just that damnable silence that had plagued her most of the night.

Backing up to the wall, she intended to go back the way she came. However, when she got there, she couldn't find the hole again. Funny, she couldn't remember having wandered _that_ far. Not knowing what else to do, she followed the wall and kept on hand on it, going slowly so she wouldn't have any more close encounters like the last one. After what seemed like an eternity, the first sound she'd heard that wasn't the sirens or her own footsteps met her ears.

It was the sound of water lapping at the shore.

She realized that she'd made it to the shore of Toluca Lake somehow. The wheels in her head were turning, trying to make sense of it all. Something was nagging at the back of her brain until it suddenly hit her. Whoever the escapee was, they'd left a clue- on purpose! The uneven scrawl over the hole was made up of mostly lower case letters, all except five of them. W, A, T,E, and R. Someone had wanted whoever was following them to end up at the lake. But there was no way that person could have been behind the making of the crevasse she'd fallen into, could they? How could any of this have happened without someone catching on?

Confused, she stood there staring through the fog at the placid waters when another sound invaded the silence. It was the same rustling sound she'd heard before at the base of the tower. She turned around to look back in the direction of the prison and saw something at long last. Diana looked in time to see a shape, furtive and indistinct, vanish through another small hole in the wall. Racing after it, she followed it through, without a clue as to what she would find on the other side.


	2. Ch2 A Way In

Chapter Two

Silent Hill: Corruption

(Heads up, I will likely be tweaking what little I've been able to find on the layout for Toluca Prison. There are some places essential to the operation of a prison that I was unable to find online. So if you spot some discrepancies with the Silent Hill games there, that's why.)

_Tell me again why I keep crawling through holes this morning? _thought Diana, hugging her guns to her chest as she squeezed through the narrow opening. _At least this isn't as small as the last one. _She was grateful when she managed to finally get her head through to the other side and twisted her face up to look around her before pulling the rest of herself through. She felt vulnerable when she was in the hole because there wasn't enough room to maneuver. If an inmate were to find her in that position… well, there was no way she'd be able to get away from them fast enough with her arms effectively pinned to her sides.

But now, now she found herself in the courtyard, scratching her scalp. There was no sign of the person or animal that scuttled through the wall just before her, and once again it was deathly quiet. There's something about that kind of silence that gets into your blood, seeps into your pores and dampens every sound you make. It's as if the urge to preserve the quiet was instinctive, and Diana felt that inexplicable desire to stay hushed as she surveyed the scene around her. It was still foggy, and Diana could only see in front of her about ten or fifteen feet at a time. Breathing in the air made her feel like she was trying to inhale cold soup. Uncomfortable, the weight of the atmosphere sat heavily on her chest.

Part of her wanted to shout aloud and to see if anyone else was around, but something in her held back. In no doubt now that Toluca Prison was facing some kind of crisis, she didn't want to reveal her hand so soon. There was a good chance the element of surprise would come in handy. Question is, before whatever the hell it was went down, had anybody managed to get off a call to the warden? He'd have been able to call in extra disturbance control teams from other facilities in the area, even the local constabulary if it were bad enough. And it had to be bad enough. Those holes had to be new, and as they were a breach in the outer wall, anybody could have gotten out- or in, like she herself had. Her mind began to entertain the idea that someone had launched an attack on the prison from outside and now held the rest of the staff hostage. She frowned at the idea. That scenario still left too many unanswered questions.

"For one, what happened to the control officer? There's no way anyone without authorization could have made it that far," she whispered to herself, creeping along the wall in the direction that would lead her to the hallway which housed the entrance to the cell blocks and the showers. Of course, she'd probably have to deal with the problem of a locked door again, but she'd worry about that when she got to it. She proved herself right when she got to the door, for there was no way that steel monstrosity was going to open without a key. Normally, an inconvenience like that would have simply made her roll her eyes, but the oppressive silence and overall weirdness of her day had her so stressed that instead she kicked the door in her frustration.

"Ugh," she grunted, placing her booted foot back on the ground. Her toes still smarted, even though she had steel toes in her boots. She counted herself lucky that she was allowed to wear them, but another part of her brain flickered back a memory of another officer she wished had not been allowed to…

_Two weeks into the job, she'd been pegged to pull a mandatory overtime double shift, and for once, she'd actually gotten to see this place in the daylight. It was exhausting working for another either hours after having been up all night, be she didn't really have problem with it. This was just the kind of workplace that always had to be staffed. After all, they could hardly shut down everything at five and let everyone go home for the night while leaving the inmates to their own devices. And sometimes, they were just too bloody short staffed. __Somebody__ had to be there. _

_That day she'd noticed a rag hanging from the nearest security camera. After reporting it to her supervisor, she'd reached up to pull it off and heard muffled cries of pain coming from the other end of the courtyard. Hidden behind a bench in one corner, she saw Officer Blackstock kicking an inmate that lay curled on the ground in the fetal position._

"_Hey, knock it off!" she cried out, reaching a hand forward to pull him back. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" _

_Blackstock yanked his arm out of her grasp and glared at her, and her eyes quickly spotted blood on the tips of his steel toed boots. His lips curled up in a sneer and he put his hands on his hips, wordlessly daring her to do something about it. Then his face softened into an expression of utmost condescension. _

"_Can it, Rookie," he'd snapped at her. Rolling his eyes he crossed his arms over his substantial midsection while the inmate moaned piteously on the floor. "You don't know what you're talkin' about and you don't have any idea what was goin' on here, anyway. This one was disrespectin' me and I was just puttin' him back in his place. Gotta maintain order, after all. Can't have these rejects getting' out of hand and hurtin' a sweet little thing like you, can we?"_

_Diana arched a frosty brow at him as she reached for her radio. "Just so you now," she told him, "I'm no Rookie. I've done this job elsewhere, at another prison. And I happen to know what you were just doing is illegal. I'm reporting you to the captain for this. Don't think you can get out of it."_

_Fury soon replaced condescension on Blackstock's face as he lunged at her, arms swinging wildly. Dropping her radio, she caught one of his hands in hers and forced his wrist back while she sidestepped, causing him to squeal in pain. A wrist lock never, ever felt good. Forcing him to the ground, she put her knee painfully between his shoulder blades, digging in any time he so much as twitched. Diana leaned her face down to whisper in his ear, "Oh by the way, the captain is sure to know by now already. That camera you covered up to keep your little 'lesson' private? Yeah, I took the rag off that before I came for a peek. You're screwed, period."_

She'd held him until the responding officers arrived, but didn't quite get the reaction she expected. Because the incident had been recorded thanks to her smart actions, they were forced to fire Blackstock. Rumor has it, he was probably facing charges too, but so far she hadn't been issued any subpoenas or contacted by a lawyer. The incident turned out to be the beginning of the schism between her and the rest of the staff. Turns out, Blackstock was nephew to the warden, and the warden didn't take too kindly to her getting one of his kinfolk fired. Everyone else was just mad at her for rocking the boat, since they knew that the supervisors were all going to be pissed now.

So, even though she was given a public commendation for her actions, privately they all set out to make her life hell. Every distasteful little chore, every nasty surprise they could drop in her lap, they did. Didn't matter that her name was mentioned in the newspaper for being one of their best and their brightest, she was persona non grata from that point on. They didn't speak to her except to give her orders or deride the "holy one" in front of each other and the inmates- a problem which was making her job increasingly more dangerous if they'd stopped to think about it. With all the disrespect they showed her, the inmates were picking up on it. If her fellow staff didn't see any reason to back her up and treat her with respect, the inmates sure as hell wouldn't. She'd had to step up the number of them that she sent to the hole for trying to grab a handful of her chest or pulling out their fishing lure, hoping she'd want to take a bite. Whenever they did that, she found it remarkably difficult not to kick them between the legs so hard they puked. But whenever she brought it up to her supervisors, they just rolled their eyes and shrugged, saying something like, "Henley and her histrionics again. That's just prison life, sister." She should have left the job then, but Diana had always possessed a perversely strong stubborn streak and refused to be beaten by these lowlifes. And in her head, both staff and inmates were rapidly collecting together under that common banner. The decision was also helped along by the fact that moving across country had drained her finances and she still had car and mortgage payments to make.

Sighing, she forced her mind back to the problem at hand. Her shoulders drooped as she tried to figure out how to get in with no key. The best idea she could come up with was to follow the wall along the back of the building, looking for more holes to crawl through. No such luck. The brick and concrete of the wall was solid, with only one way in- through the door.

Diana ground her teeth. How the hell was she going to get through the door with no key? It was freakin' locked, and as confident as she felt in her abilities, she knew she'd never been blessed with the strength to rip a steel door off its hinges. No human was. 'Now what?' was starting to become that day's theme, and it was driving her nuts. She slid down to the ground, fuming and cursing the door for not being open. She wondered if someone was ever going to come along and find her there.

KRRRRRK….HSSSSSS, her radio suddenly crackled.

Her heart leapt, and she pulled the wonderful device from its holster. If someone was trying to get through, that meant there was someone in Control. She would finally be able to find out what in God's name was going on and figure out a way free of the day's madness.

She lifted the radio in front of her mouth and pressed the button. "Control, Control, this is Henley- do you copy? What's the situation?" But there was no reply, only more static. Diana let out a little scream. This was unbelievable. So many hours now and not a word. Now, when she finally got a hint that there was someone else out there, no one answered. NO ONE ANSWERED. It was even harder now not to hurl her radio away, but her well-trained self-control prevailed, and she stuffed it, snarling, back into the holster.

"Not funny. NOT FUNNY!" she said, slamming her fist against the wall. Then, there was a noise so quiet, she barely heard it over the hiss and crackle of her radio.

clink.

"What…," she turned her head to follow the direction it came from and she saw a big brass key being pulled into the drainage pipe leading to the gutters on the roof's edge. She ran over to the pipe with some crazy hope that this mysteriously forgotten key would somehow be the one to let get her out of the courtyard and into the prison proper. When she reached the pipe it was too late; she couldn't see the thing anymore. Wondering how it been pulled into the pipe, she frowned and looked up, scanning the roof carefully with her eyes. No one was standing up there, pulling it through the gutter. Rubbing her neck, confused, Diana got down on all fours and stared into the pipe.

Nothing. Rummaging through her pockets, she found what she was looking for, the cheap piece-of-crap pocket flashlight she always carried with her. She never expected it to be this useful, but when she shone it into the base of the pipe, she managed to just catch the yellowed glint of light bouncing off the key. What's more, it looked like she could reach it too. She rocked back onto her heels and tried to figure out how stupid it was to reach into a hole like that. Something had dragged the key in there, that much was certain, and she didn't know if it was capable or inclined to hurt her. Every now and again some kind of critter managed to sneak its way through chinks in the fence or wall, but the only kind she'd ever seen beyond the odd lizard were bats and mice. She couldn't imagine any of those kind of animals being inclined to pull a key into a pipe, but she figured bats didn't hang out in pipes and mice weren't much of a threat. Whatever her reservations, she had to get that key.

She let out a deep breath and lay down on the ground again before reaching into the pipe. Her fingers groped blindly in the moist darkness until they came across the smooth surface of the key. Just as she wrapped her fingers around it, something grabbed her by the wrist.

"Yaaggghh!" yelled Diana, desperately trying to jerk her hand out without losing hold of her prize. Whatever it was, it hurt, and she could feel a bunch of sharp points digging into her wrist and hand. "Ow, ow, ow, ow!" She pulled and screamed and kicked the pipe in outrage, but the thing wouldn't let go. Finally, in one last desperate move before deciding to give up on the key, she braced her feet against the wall with her legs bent. With a pained grunt, she kicked against the wall with her legs, pulling on her arm with all her strength. Her arm popped loose of the pipe, and she felt like she'd left some of her own skin behind in it.

She did, too. Long gashes ran the length of her hand and she gingerly uncurled her fingers to lay relieved eyes on the key ensconced in her bloody hand. Then, stuffing it in her pocket, she aimed the shotgun at the pipe and fired a couple of shots into it. The pellets went through the thin metal and the something inside it gave a brief gurgling rattle before going completely silent. Viscous fluid oozed from the bottom of the pipe and she could only assume it was the thing's blood. Cradling her injured hand against her chest, she walked up and kicked the damned pipe.

"Did I taste good? Huh? Huh?" she panted. "Too bad the second course was freakin' lead!"

Trying not to whimper, she looked at her hand again, trying to assess the damage. While it hurt like hell, it wasn't actually too bad. It was just a flesh wound. The animal… thing… creature… hadn't severed any tendons or damaged any bones, so her biggest concern would be infection. She needed to get somewhere where she could have it cleaned and wrapped. That meant the infirmary, and that was clear on the other side of the facility. For now, she pulled a ponytail band out of her hair to hold the rest of the tissues from her packet against the scratches. The hand might be a little stiff as it scabbed up, but that was okay as long as she didn't wind up in another crazy situation like that last one.

"Damn, and that's my shooting hand, too," she sighed, grimacing as she shouldered her shotgun once more. "That _hurts._ Okay, time to quit whining already. You've got a job to do", she told herself, making her way back to the door. Praying the key would work, but not really trusting her luck thus far, she was shocked when it turned quite easily. When she stepped into the hallway, it was completely dark except for the dim patch of light that she let in when she opened the door. That was weird. Whatever happened to the emergency generator? This place was supposed to be constantly lit. If it wasn't, there was no way they'd be able to see everything the inmates were up to. She switched her flashlight back on and stuck it in her front pocket so it could light the path in front of her. Last thing she needed was any more surprises.

For a moment, she debated with herself what to do about the door. The proper thing to do was to lock every door as she went through- that was what they were all trained to do. Every locked door was one more layer of security, meant to keep everyone safe. But with all the difficulty she'd had getting anywhere today, she was reluctant to close anything behind her. Hell, she'd even managed to lose the first hole she went through. That still galled and confused her.

Shaking her head at her own stupidity, she pulled the heavy door closed and locked it behind her. _South or north?, _she wondered. Either way would eventually lead to Central Control, but the south cell block ended near the cafeteria, and the cafeteria was close to the infirmary. Might as well make that pit stop before moving on her way. Her hand was throbbing, and who knows what kind of crap was mildewing in the nasty old pipe. There was probably rust in there too. Thank God she was up to date on her tetanus shots at any rate. In the end, that was what decided that for her.

"Infirmary it is," she told herself as she headed off into the dark.


	3. Ch3 Detour

Chapter Three

Silent Hill: Corruption

Being a prison, it stood to reason there wouldn't be many windows in the place. Those that could be found were tiny, purposefully made so small no human could fit through them. This hallway had none. With the power shut down, the only illumination came from the feeble flashlight in her pocket. With leftover adrenaline from the pipe encounter still coursing through her, Diana felt like the darkness was crowding her. She knew neither situation lent itself to good visibility, but at least when she was out in the fog there wasn't any ceiling to help pen her in. If this went on for much longer, she'd probably end up claustrophobic.

It took a while for her eyes to adjust, but as she followed the cracked tile path of the corridor, a new sound met her ears. It was a crumbling kind of sound, like pebbles being kicked downhill by a careless foot. She drew her shotgun again, holding it at the low-ready position as she proceeded to carefully follow the source of the noise. By this point, Diana was supremely unwilling to have any more surprises dropped in her lap. But no one gets everything they want, and nothing was going right today. So she both was and wasn't taken aback to find that the deeper darkness at the end of her flashlight's beam was another massive… HOLE.

Clamping her lips together in a tight little line, she got down on the ground and leaned over the edge to see what was on the bottom. She couldn't see the bottom. Figures. For one moment she practically wilted right there on the edge of the pit, listening to the crumbling chunks of floor fall to who knows where. Her temples throbbed, a headache rapidly beginning to pound the inside of her skull as she tried to wrap her mind around it all. Diana clutched her head with her hands and pulled back slightly from the edge and sat with her back against the wall. None of this made any sense. She tried to find some kind of sense behind it all, but there was no way to force it. Giant pieces of floor simply did not disappear on their own with nobody noticing. People didn't bore holes in a prison wall that big without someone seeing them. And God help her, animals didn't drag keys into pipes so they could try and eat her hand!

"What the hell is going on? I don't get any of this…," she whispered in a choked voice. She was alone, and never more aware of that state than she was at that moment. There was something about being in a prison, in a place meant for confinement that drove that reality home. Everyone is alone sometimes, she knew that, but in here with the dark and the holes and the locks and the creepy quiet, she was starting to feel cut off from reality itself.

Diana lost track of the time, but eventually came back to her senses enough to give herself a little shake. Shining her light into the hole, she realized that it wasn't as catastrophic as she first thought. This hole wasn't like the first one she'd fallen into in that she could see the bottom several feet below her. It was an easily survivable fall, provided she didn't pitch into it head first. She looked across the hole and calculated the distance to the other side, coming to the conclusion that there was no way she was going to able to jump it, especially not encumbered as she was by the weapons hanging from her body. She stood back up and with a sigh, started retracing her steps until she came to the double door that stood across from the one she'd entered through. Now, she knew it was a dead end in there, that it ultimately didn't open into much of anything, but maybe she could find something of use in there to help her get across the hole in case the other hallway proved to be another dead end.

To her relief, that particular door was unlocked. There wasn't much inside, but there was an industrial-sized fan and a styrofoam cup. Pondering this for a moment, she stooped down and looked at the cord to the fan, and for the first time that morning, a smile stretched wanly across her face. The cord was nice and long, maybe 25 feet. That would do just fine. Now, how to get the stupid cord to where she needed it. Diana reached down and gave it an experimental tug. Its connection to the fan was pretty solid, but not unbreakable. She didn't have any tools to cut it off with, so she'd have to pull it off. She could probably get it off the fastest by closing the door on it and pulling with everything she had. But that would make one hellacious racket. Who knows what that kind of noise would bring down on her head. She still didn't know how or why everything that happened did, but as far as she knew, someone had attacked the place and ripped huge holes out of Toluca Prison. That meant so much noise wouldn't be exactly wise, not with an unknown enemy running around here somewhere. Instead she started twisting the cord at the base, wriggling and pulling at it patiently and quietly until it eventually popped off in her hand. Rolling it up, she stuffed it in her pocket and left the room.

Sure enough, the other side of the hallway was blocked off too, but at least it wasn't another hole. Steel desks, filing cabinets, broken tile, and other debris was piled up from floor to ceiling in a mass so solid it practically formed another wall of its own. There was no getting through _that._ Trudging back to the hole, she looked around for something to fasten her cord to. She settled on a piece of rebar jutting out from the broken part of the floor. The hole was wide enough that the only way she could figure to get across was to climb down first, so she gripped the cord in one hand while she slid her legs gingerly over the edge.

"Oh hell!" she gasped as she began to slide down more quickly than she'd intended. Trying to slow her controlled fall, she grasped the cord in her hands tightly and her injured hand began to scream in protest. No matter how hard she gripped it, she kept sliding further down. The blood from the reopened cuts on her hand slicked the cord, so it was difficult to control the speed of her descent. Sheer will kept her clinging to the cord, going hand over hand. It wasn't that far a drop in all truth, but the difficulty in keeping her wounded hand wrapped around it started to make her arms shake. Suddenly, something shifted and she looked up.

The cord was slipping off of the rebar and she was only halfway down.

"Cra-"

Diana landed flat on her back amidst the rubble with the wind knocked out of her. One of the guns was poking into her back and the other had slipped off when she fell. At first she thought her flashlight had broken, but it flickered back to life when she gave it a little shake. When she had gathered her wits enough to move, she slowly rolled over onto her belly and pushed herself up on her elbows to take a look around.

Panic set in for a second when she realized that she didn't know where her shotgun was. Ignoring the dull ache of her new bruises and the stinging of her hand, she breathed a sigh of relief when she felt the comforting chill of the gun's metal barrel under her fingertips. Pulling the strap gently back over her arm, she hauled herself up from the floor with the help of the wall.

_I really, really hope no one was around to hear that, _she thought, wondering how badly she'd managed to bang up her knee. Hopefully it was just bruised, but damn, it hurt. It'd be a while before she could walk normally again. The bad thing was, even if it were just a deep bruise, the odds were decent that she'd have to run on it if she encountered any hostiles. She gritted her teeth and shrugged. She would do what she'd always done- what she had to. The part that was bugging her was trying to figure out what she had to do. Looking up, she tried to figure out a way back out of the hole and onto the other side of the hall. She picked up the cord and glanced dubiously at it. Not being anything like a rancher, she'd had no reason to ever learn how to make a lasso. Not to mention, after her recent slip, even if she could loop it around something above her she didn't trust it to hold her while she climbed. She wasn't exactly interested in taking another tumble.

A low bubbling gurgle sounded in the wall, causing Diana to blink. That was an idea. If she remembered correctly, the boiler was down here, and a room near the boiler housed the emergency generator and several fuse boxes. If she could make it there without any more holes in her way, maybe she could get the lights on. The phones, too.

Hope at the prospect of reestablishing ties with the outside world sped her footsteps down the new hall and made her perhaps a little more careless than she ought to have been. So when she heard the familiar whirring noise of a security camera moving, she jumped about a foot in the air. With the shotgun in one hand and her flashlight in the other, she frantically searched the ceiling, trying to figure out how this was even possible when the power was out. At last she spotted the sole camera in the vicinity, and scowled. It wasn't doing anything now. After giving it a dirty look for a few more moments, Diana shook her head and moved on, figuring she'd imagined it but unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching her.

Shoulders drooping with relief, Diana found the door to the boiler room. But when she tried the handle, her relief proved to be short-lived. Of course it was locked. She rested her forehead against the door for a moment, then walked off, resigning herself to try and find a way out without the lights. As soon as she was halfway down the hall, however, the soft click coming from the door echoed through the desolate silence.

Funnily enough, her only thought at that was _What now? _not _Door's open- great. _Standing cautiously to the side of the door, she put her hand back on the handle, ready to fire as soon as she opened the door if she had to. With a swift movement that sent sharp spikes of pain shooting through her knee, she jerked the door open forcefully. Nothing happened. Going in barrel first, Diana poked her head inside, waving her flashlight around.

"Huh," she said, eyebrows drawn together in a crease. The boiler room wasn't one of their automated doors. A person in Central Control wouldn't have been able to simply push a button and pop it open for her. Somehow the door had opened on its own. Diana was getting sick and tired of the way nothing made sense that day. This kind of crap just didn't happen. No way, no how. There was a kind of order to the way the world worked, and like any of us, when her idea of what that order looks like started being pulled out from underneath her, she got pissed off. She didn't utter a word, simply slammed her good hand in a fist against the wall.

_Fine. Whatever. Let's just see if I can get the stupid lights to turn on. _Wound up as she was, her wits were not completely gone, and she had the good sense to look behind the boiler and the generator before doing anything else. Again, she was trying to prevent any more unwelcome surprises. Most likely a futile endeavor, but by this point, she was desperate for any kind of sense that she knew what was going on.

The first thing she did was pop open a fuse box. What she found in there was a pleasant surprise for once. Looked like the maintenance guy that worked on it last carelessly left a small bag of beef jerky in there. Thank god, she was starving. Diana couldn't remember the last time she ate. She wiped her hands off as best she could on her pants and ripped the bag open, wishing she had a sink around so she could wash before she ate. Crawling through dirt and falling down holes and sticking your hand into strange pipes left your fingers more than a little… flavorful. Still, she was hungry enough that it didn't matter much. The bag was quickly emptied, and she returned to the task at hand. When she looked back at the fuse box, she couldn't see that anything was amiss, but she did rather wish she knew more about what she was doing.

Turning to the generator yielded different results. Her eyebrows rose when she saw that the circuit breaker had simply been switched off. Somebody had been down here and deliberately disabled the emergency power. No surprise there, but it was confirmation of hostile intent, right? That seemed like the most obvious answer to Diana, but part of her was wondering if anything today was even meant to be obvious or simple. Meant. Now there was a funny concept. Like the events of the day had a mind of their own, heh.

She reached forward and flipped the switch and nothing happened. She kicked the generator and nothing happened except she felt a little better. Rolling her eyes, she looked more closely at the generator and shone her flashlight into the fuel receptacle. Oh, it was empty. Why would attackers drain the fuel and flip the circuit breaker. More likely someone just let it run dry and like a slacker, didn't bother filling it back up when it did. Where was she going to find something to fill it back up with? The answer was simple- she wasn't. At least, not soon.

Wearily, she trudged back into the hallway to look for the door leading to the stairs up. Whatever else happened, she was ready to get out of this infernal hole.


	4. Ch4 Not Alone

*Sorry for the insanely long wait, ladies and gents. But here at last is Chapter 4. I promise to try harder about updating in a more timely manner.*

Chapter 4

Silent Hill: Corruption

Diana was grateful to see that the door to the stairwell was not locked. A strange, but welcome fact. She'd ceased being surprised at what doors were and weren't impassable, unconsciously coming to believe that whatever ways were open to her were completely random and had nothing to do with the slacking of the staff. There was so much going on right then that couldn't be explained that this answer made just as much sense as any.

Wondering what other obstacles might await her on the path to Control, Diana was so deep in thought that the state of her surroundings were gradual in dawning on her. A strong, mildewy smell pervaded the stairwell. She could see the mold, too, dark and diseased-looking, growing thicker and thicker the further up she went. When she got to the ground floor landing, it was locked.

_Of course, _she thought with a sigh, _there's no way it could have been that easy. _Fighting the desire to do violence to the door, she turned and started heading upstairs. She was only about halfway up the next flight of stairs when she heard something snuffling and snorting somewhere below her.

A head rounded the corner, bowed between a pair of hunched, naked shoulders. It wasn't a human head, though- oh no. The creature was bipedal, but that was where the resemblance ended. Sickly pale skin shot through with blackened veins was stretched tight over a disfigured frame. Instead of arms at its sides, it looked like its arms had somehow grown inside its body, pulled toward its front until they erupted from its abdomen as a pair of obscenely long-fingered hands.

Diana stood frozen with shock and horror. Her skin went clammy and her legs threatened to buckle. Of all the impossible things that had happened today, she'd never even remotely considered the appearance of monsters. Before, it had only been events occurring which should not have been possible, but could be reasoned away. This was something that shouldn't even _exist. _

For a short eternity, both woman and creature were stock still. Then it reared back, the underside of its eyeless face lifting to reveal a vertical maw of sharp, uneven teeth. With a gurgling howl, it began to hunt, lurching towards her on shuffling footsteps that grew faster the closer it got to her. Despite its ungainliness, it had no difficulty with the stairs and its proximity is what finally convinced shell-shocked Diana to move. She bolted like a bat out of hell, slipping on the mossy, crumbling floor and scrambling wildly higher. When she came to the next door, her hand slipped off the handle, it was slick with the cold sweat of fear. She tried it again, and to her desperate dismay, it too was locked. The shuffling _thing _was getting closer, so she turned and kept running.

The next door proved to be just as useless, and with the shuffler right behind her now, she had no choice but to turn around and face it. Good thing she did too, as its hands had hold of her jacket and was beginning to pull her close. She could smell the decayed reek of the thing's breath, huffing at her while it salivated in anticipation. Unable to shake it off, it clung to her like a limpet. Woman and monster fought desperately, and Diana was knocked heavily to the ground, stairs slamming into the back of her head. She knew if she succumbed to unconsciousness there would be no going back, and she held onto awareness with a tenaciousness that surprised her. Somehow, she maneuvered the shotgun into her hand, poking the barrel into the monster's mouth, and with a squeeze of the trigger, she blew its head open.

The monster tumbled back down the stairs and Diana lowered her gun with shaking hands. Her eyes widened when she saw it scrabbling around on the landing, trying to get back up. How was that possible after a point blank shot to the head? She shot it again, her aim more deliberate this time, and the remainder of its head exploded in a vile-smelling mess of rotten meat. Breathing hard, she walked back down the stairs with uneven footsteps, wanting to make sure it was dead this time.

She poked it carefully with the tip of her shotgun, watching it closely for the slightest hint of movement. The sound of its last breath bubbling out of whatever it had that passed for lungs caused her trigger finger to twitch reflexively. She tried to shoot it three more times before she realized that her gun was empty. Raising her foot, she stomped down with her boot on the twisted carcass over and over again until she was positive nothing was left to move.

Unable to come to grips with what had just happened, Diana bolted up the stairs again even though there was nothing after her now. She acted on pure instinct, just trying to get away from _there_. Her brain felt as fuzzy as her vision was going, and soon she was at the absolute top of the stairs. She found a door at the top, and with fumbling hands, wrenched the handle down and jerked the door open. She slammed the door shut behind her and stood there, swaying on her feet and hyperventilating. She was on the roof.

Diana felt her bile begin to rise and stumbled over to one corner before vomiting over the side of the roof. The rancid taste of regurgitated jerky filled her mouth and she continued to heave past the point when there was nothing left to heave. Then she fell to her knees, with the sour taste of gall slowly beginning to fade, leaving only the bitterness of a shattered perception of reality in its wake.

It is never a comfortable thing to have your perceptions shaken. Perceptions are the filter through which we interact with reality, our safety harness from the horror and difficulty of the world around us. We rely on it, are supported by it. Whenever someone is forced to face the fact that reality isn't what they thought it was, it feels terrible. Diana's idea of reality had been ripped to shreds so brutally that she was reduced to a quivering wreck right there on the roof of the prison. For several long, agonizing minutes she lay there, curled in on herself and trying to shut out the world as she now knew it.

Slowly, the system shock of her now twisted reality began to wear off, leaving Diana calmer, but with a newfound sense of edgy awareness . Bracing herself against a crumbling concrete wall, she pushed herself to a standing position and took careful stock of her situation. She'd bumped her head when she fell and her back was bruised, but her most pressing injuries were the cuts on her hand. Because of the abuse she'd put it through, it was once more seeping blood.

Diana started patting her pockets, searching for something better to bandage it with than tissue. That's when a whole new horror began to dawn on her. Somewhere along the line, she'd lost her spare clip of rifle ammunition. She didn't know if it fell out of her pocket when she tumbled down the hole or during her struggle with the thing on the stairs, but the result was the same- she was down to fifteen rounds. There were ten bullets left for the rifle and five for shotgun shells left, meaning is there were many more of those shuffler around, she was going to have to find another way to defend herself soon.

With shaking fingers Diana loaded the remaining shells into her shotgun and slid the strap over her shoulder. She also made sure the safety on the rifle was off. It wasn't the best weapon for close combat, but it would have to do once the shotgun ran out. A faint hope that it wouldn't be an issue lingered in the back of her mind, but she wasn't counting on it. Considering the number of crazy things she's experienced so far that day, the odds were against the thing from before being the only creature she'd have to contend with.

Diana's eyes raked the rooftop, looking for any other way to get back down inside the building without going back the way she came. Spying a maintenance hatch on the far side, she tried it and was both relieved and disturbed to find it unlocked.

_This just isn't right_, she thought. If she remembered correctly, this section of the roof was right over Segregation, where they housed all of the more… problematic inmates. She was starting to get the feeling that she was being herded, though why and by what she had no clue.

Throwing open the hatch, Diana descended a rusted ladder that was nailed to the wall of the small room below. She forced herself to keep a firm grip on the rungs, ignoring the sting of her injured hand.

After a moment's fumbling, she found the light switch. Fuse boxes lined one wall and across from her stood a solid metal door. Instead of a standard keyhole, it sported a speaker box with a button off to one side. Her shoulders slumped when she realized that she should have expected this. Most of the doors in this part of the prison could only be opened from the picket in the middle of Segregation or the facility's Central Control room. Normally this just meant better security, but right now it was yet another obstacle placed in her difficult and convoluted path.

She was so tired. Tired of hurting, tired of the weirdness and silence, and tired of nothing ever being simple. Wanting to crumple again like she did up on the roof, instead Diana shoved self pity to the back of her mind in the interests of finding a way through the door.

Not knowing what else to do, she pushed the button on the speaker box. It squawked, and she blinked in surprise when her own voice began drifting out of it, faint and nearly drowned out by white noise. She was sure it was her voice, because she remembered the conversation very well.

"…..Sir, we can't….. seriously wrong….. going to report this….."

The words were from a conversation she'd had several weeks ago with Captain Taylor, a tall, thin, and balding man with all the appeal of a severe case of athlete's foot. One of the inmates had gestured her over to his cell door, wanting to gripe to her about how the guy two doors down was getting special treatment. He accused the lieutenant on shift of bringing the guy contraband- everything from marijuana to a cell phone. When she brought the issue up with Taylor, he'd squirmed for a while and refused to look her in the eyes. Eventually he just hemmed and haahed before telling her that it was just "one of those little things, no big deal, not going to hurt anyone so we look the other way. No need to stir things up, right sweetheart?"

Aside from the rank sexism in his response, it was just one of the many times something she'd reported was dismissed out of hand. She left that meeting steamed, telling the captain that he'd be hearing from the Bureau of Prisons soon. Yeah, right. Turns out they were used to hearing complaints about this place. Somewhere along the line, someone had probably greased a few palms and she doubted it would take anything short of a death on premises to get people to do anything about the corruption at Toluca Prison. The last time they had any sort of serious investigation was when that Sullivan guy offed himself with a spoon a few years back. Even though she hadn't been working here then, she could picture how the staff here responded to the incident- a quick scrub of the place, a shakedown to get rid of all the contraband and give the worst employees some paid time off to keep them out of the way. Then everything could go back to normal once no one was looking at them.

How in the world was this playing here and now? The sound cut off, and a loud click emanated from the door, jerking her away from her memories and back into the present. The door was unlocked. Gingerly she pushed it open, leading the way with the barrel of her gun. Nothing. The hallway was empty, but she heard sounds in the distance, as if they were coming through another thick door. Her radio began to crackle again and she tensed up. Pushing the button, she made sure it wasn't someone trying to get through, but once again it was only static. That could only mean one thing.

Diana stepped cautiously through the door, looking all around for the source of the interference, but she couldn't see anything. Shadows moved behind the window of the door to the nearest cell block and she moved in for a closer look. The sounds grew louder, and now she could hear voices. There were a lot of the gurgling moans like she'd come to associate with the shuffler, but there was also something new…

There was a person in there.

They were yelling themselves hoarse, but whoever it was, they were alive and keeping decidedly unpleasant company at the moment. Diana squatted down in front of the cell block door and opened the bean hole to peer through. Sure enough, a pair of the monstrosities were throwing themselves at one of the cell doors, bashing their revolting bodies against it in an attempt to get at whoever was inside. She didn't know or care at this point who was inside. Any other human company was preferable to the damnable isolation thus far. She also wouldn't feel right leaving someone behind with those things, even if they couldn't get through the door.

She took careful aim through the hole, exhaling slowly. Then she pulled the trigger and a loud BOOM echoed through the cell block. One monster was on the ground in front of the cell with its head blown away and the other one had turned and was making its way to her door in search of whatever made the noise. Her stomach churned but she forced herself to wait until the shuffler was right at the door before pulling the trigger on this one, blowing a hole through it too. Praying it would work, she quickly stood up and pressed the button to open the cell block door. The lock popped and she quickly stepped inside while the things lay squirming on the floor. Not wanting to use any more ammunition on them, she went to each of them in turn and stomped them until there was nothing left to get back up.

She looked around to see if there were any more, but the coast was clear. When she turned to face the cell's occupant, her face grew hard with her mouth pressed into a thin line. Of course, she should have known.

"It just had to be you, didn't it?"


	5. Ch5 Strange Bedfellows

Silent Hill: Corruption

Chapter 5: Strange Bedfellows

The man's name was Dave Wilkes. Any hope she'd had that staff had been forced to barricade themselves in a cell evaporated at the sight of him. His appearance seemed to fit right in with the theme of things designed especially to aggravate her today. He was the biggest pain incarcerated at Toluca Prison and a constant thorn in her side. He got away with talking all kinds of crap to her thanks to her lack friends amongst the staff. Of average height, Wilkes operated under the illusion that his carefully honed muscles made him God's gift to women. Not once did it occur to him that the pornographic tattoos covering every available inch of his pale flesh might be a turn off to some people.

The defiant unease on his face from dealing with the monster turned to shock when he saw who had come to his rescue. When he saw the expression she was shooting back at him, he burst into raucous laughter and started smirking at her through the tiny window in his door.

"Well, if it isn't Officer Frigid. What can I do for you this fine day?" he drawled.

"Go to hell," she replied with a snap.

That elicited another chuckle from his lips and he said, "Hate to break it to you, sweetness, but I got a funny feeling we're already there."

There was a ring of truth to his words that Diana wasn't entirely ready to accept. If this was hell, then what was she doing here? She couldn't recall having committed any acts horrible enough to earn eternal punishment. Wasn't there supposed to be some kind of justice to the whole equation? Nevertheless, the idea that they were both in hell took root in the back of her mind, in the dark place where she banished all unwanted thoughts.

This line of thought caused Diana to drop her gaze to where the carcass of one of the shamblers lay in a pool of its own foul-smelling blood. _Can blood rot?_ she thought, skittering back when she saw that the slowly spreading pool had reached her boots. She rolled her eyes and sighed when she realized how futile the gesture was after having stomped the creature's… brains… out. At this point, filth should be the least of her concerns. Still, she hated to feel this dirty.

Wilkes' face grew pensive as he watched her little display and he commented, "Funny how blood gets everywhere. You can wash for hours, but you can never get it all." Discomfited, she looked at him, wondering what he was thinking of. Normally she tried to avoid thinking about what an inmate might have done to get locked up. Odds are if she asked any of them, they'd just lie. But now, she couldn't help wondering about the past of the man in front of her. Much as she really didn't want to, she found herself wondering what had happened to make him the way he was.

Wilkes snapped out of his reverie to smirk at her some more. "So… you gonna get me out of here or what, Doll?" he asked, the obnoxious arrogance flooding back into his voice.

Diana slid the strap of her gun back over her shoulder and stared at him. After a moment's contemplation, she shrugged and answered coolly, "Or what."

A tidal wave of fear and fury washed over him as she turned her back and began to walk away. He began to scream, spittle flying from his mouth with his desperate words. "Don't you walk away from me! Get back here, let me out! You don't know what it's like in here, you self-righteous b-".

She whirled back around, unwrapping her bad hand and slamming it on the glass for him to see. The cuts were red and irritated and as much as she'd tried to keep her hand clean, it was caked with blood and dirt.

"I don't know what it's like?" she yelled back at him, her nerves stretched so tight she was in no mood to put up with his bull. Ignoring the pain, she slammed her hand on the window one more time before withdrawing and cradling it against her body. "I don't know what it's like? I've been out here wandering around, trying to find some clue to what happened in this god-forsaken place. For hours, nothing! Then I end up forced to crawl through dirt and rubble, have my arm GNAWED ON, and fall down an entire freaking floor. On top of that, I don't have a whole lot of ammo left. At least you've been safe in your damned cell!"

"No I haven't," he said quietly. That took her aback. He placed his forehead on the glass, his breath making a mist on the window. What could he possibly mean by that? Frowning, she asked him.

"You mean you haven't seen it? Ever since the siren first went off, things started… changing, back and forth. Walls move, doors show up out of nowhere, and more of those things find me. And whenever things go to the way they are now, I'm back in my cell feeling like I just woke up after a kegger. C'mon, C.O., you gotta let me out. If I stay in here, something's gonna eat me, I know it," he pleaded, unable to hide the slight tremor in his voice.

Diana rumpled her hair uncomfortably, unsure of what to do now. If what he said was true, then she knew she wasn't going to feel right leaving him there. It's not like he was on death row, already sentenced to die. If that were the case, she might be able to rationalize leaving him to his fate. On the other hand… if she let him out, he might turn out to be just another monster wandering the halls. After all, she didn't know what he was in here for.

Somewhere nearby there was a loud crash. They both jumped, and in that instant her decision was made. The only problem was…

"I don't know how to get you out," she answered, bending down to look at the lock. As expected, it was sturdy and built to resist tampering. It wasn't like countless inmates hadn't tried already, after all. The only thing that would open one of these bad boys was one of the big copper colored keys used for opening the heavy duty doors littered throughout the place.

"Don't worry about that," he told her, "Officer Craig liked to stick the cell keys in the desk over there when he went to use the bathroom. He was working last night when this crap started, so it oughtta still be in there."

"He put it where?" she growled, clenching her fists, then instantly regretting it when her injured hand protested. "Would it have freaking killed him to have the picket officer hold onto it? For crying out loud…" Diana stomped over to the desk in question, shoving aside her irritation. This was neither the time nor the place for getting wound up over more staff slacking. _Concentrate on the task at hand, Stupid, _she told herself. Figures that when she tried the drawers on the desk they were all locked. Nothing in her pockets was going to open it, either, and she didn't have the patience left to go looking for a key to open the desk to get the key to open the door. This was getting stupid.

Not bothering to worry about the noise and what it might attract, Diana heaved and flipped the desk over with a grunt. The desk was one of those metal affairs that had seen better days. Metal wouldn't splinter like wood can, but the metal was thin and cheap enough that the corners were all ragged and the different pieces didn't fit well together. The corners were riveted together instead of welded, so when she flipped the desk over, the back panel popped loose.

Wilkes watched her from his window with raised eyebrows. Perversely, he kind of enjoyed watching her work out her frustrations as she pried the desk apart. That is, until the siren started going off again. Diana's head jerked upright and Wilkes started banging on the door again, screaming at her to hurry up. She frantically continued to pull apart the desk while the walls, ceiling, and floor began to crack. Mold grew and spread through the cracks before their very eyes and a rancid stench filled the air. The scents of rotting meat and vegetation met their noses while the floor they stood on started to thump under their feet as if it possessed a heartbeat of its own.

Cussing wildly, Diana wrenched the last drawer apart and scooped the key up. The sounds of Wilkes' terror sped her footsteps and drove her to distraction. It took her two tries to get the key in, and when she turned the lock, he came stumbling out and into her. He grabbed hold of her shoulder, but she shrugged him off, leading him quickly in the direction of the picket. Desperately trying the keys from the same ring she'd just rescued, she found one that opened the door and they ran inside, slamming the door behind them.

In horror, they watched through the windows as the whole area around them finished the transformation to a scene of otherworldly rot.

"How is this even possible?" she gasped, stumbling backwards into an office chair.

"Forget that," Wilkes snarled at her, "what the hell did you drag us in here for anyway? Now we're trapped, idiot."

"You want out, don't you?" she shot back at him. Answering the confused look on his face, she continued, "I _know_ you've seen staff open some of the doors around here without keys. Well, how do you think we do it?"

Diana pushed past him to a set of controls. She kicked behind her when she thought she felt something brush up against her from behind, causing him to yelp. "Easy," he growled, angling for a better look at the console, "It's just me."

"Yeah, like that's a reason to relax," she shot back at him, dropping to one knee to peer under the counter when the computer wouldn't power on. This computer was never even supposed to be turned off, but by this point, she'd ascribe just about anything to the warped rules reality was playing by today. She and Wilkes both tensed when the siren died off only to be replaced by an intermittent gurgling howl of some creature that sounded disturbingly large. Spurred on by those hair-raising sounds, she rummaged around until she found the power cord hanging loose and had to brush some kind of mystery muck off the outlet before she could plug it in.

"Let's see what that does," she said, straightening back up. The computer groaned to life, and five monitors sprang to life fitfully. Four of them were linked to cameras focusing on different parts of the facility, and the fifth brought up a window with which a person could enter commands. That in and of itself was strange, too, because normally the picket cameras pointed only to different areas within segregation itself. If she had to guess, they were each pointed in turn at the door leading out of Segregation, the door to the infirmary, the gate to the prison yard, and the door to Central Control. Those were her best guesses anyway. While she'd been working here long enough to know the layout well, that didn't count for much when things kept changing, and the doors were altered just like the scene in their immediate area had been. Even with the grainy nature of the footage, it looked as if someone had sculpted ornate figures on each of the doors, though she couldn't make out the details.

While she was busy looking through the cameras, Wilkes pointed to the fifth screen and said, "Hey, look at this."

Line by line, words started appearing, words that somehow seemed eerily familiar though neither of them could quite place them. They read,

_Through me the way to the suffering city;_

_Through me the everlasting pain;_

_Through me the way that runs among the Lost_

_Justice urged on by my exalted Creator._

"Wait a minute!" she exclaimed, when it dawned on her what they were reading. Years ago she'd read these same words when she'd been on a classical literature kick. These words were from Dante's Inferno, and in this particular setting seemed freakishly fitting. "Looks like you were onto something." Oh joy. If they were going to have to make their way through seven successively worse layers of this place, she was going to scream. Again.

"Now what?" her unwelcome companion asked. "We can't just sit around here and wait for something to happen. We gotta get out while we can."

Diana gave him a look that showed him exactly how little patience she had for such stupidly obvious statement like that before she shrugged. "I dunno," she answered quietly, "The computer is acting as weird as everything else in this place, spouting Dante's words instead of the proper command prompts. I don't think the usual controls are going to work and I've got a funny feeling-"

"Just one?" mocked Wilkes. Even in the midst of hell on earth, he couldn't resist being abrasive.

"No, stupid, now quit interrupting," she snapped at him. "As I was saying, I've got a funny feeling these words are serving some kind of hint. I just don't know what about." Diana turned to look at him, her expression grim.

"I need a closer look at those doors."

He looked at her like she was crazy, and said, "No way are you leaving me alone in here. If you're gonna go walking around in psycho piece of paradise, you're taking me with you. By the way, I need one of your guns. You're not the only one that needs to be able to defend themselves in here. I'm not a bad shot- I can help."

She arched an irritable brow at him, answering, "Wow, you must think I'm stupid. If you think I'm about to hand you a gun, you've got another thing coming. You're just going to have to trust me to protect you."

"What?" Wilkes was incredulous. "Trust a chick to watch my back? What the hell… just give me a weapon already!" He made a grab for the shotgun, but she slid quickly out of arm's reach and leveled it at him in one smooth movement.

"I don't want to waste any ammo on you, so I'd strongly suggest you keep your hands to yourself," she told him icily. "I'd give you ten to one odds that I'm a better shot than you and really, you don't have a choice in the matter. I could leave you here, but like you said, you could help. I loathe you, but I don't want you dead, so you need to come with. Anymore stunts like that, though, and I might change my mind."

Wilkes held his tongue, but didn't bother to conceal the fury lurking behind his eyes. Clearly, he distrusted her as much as she did him and was in no mood to leave his fate in her hands. But he reluctantly put his hands up in a gesture of surrender and gave her an acquiescent nod.

"Good," she said, lowering the gun but not her guard. She let out a slow breath and rubbed at the pounding headache starting to build in her temple. "Now where to first?"

"How about we try leaving Seg first?" he muttered.

She nodded, decided his little burst of attitude wasn't worth the trouble of busting his chops for, and positioned herself beside the picket door. "You ready?" she asked.

'Yeah."

"Push the green button," she told him. The lock popped and she pushed the door open, leading the way with the barrel of her shotgun. Nothing immediately greeted her cautious appearance, and she led the way towards the main Seg door. It had been far from comfortable in the picket, but without the barrier of the barred windows and shatterproof glass, the skin-crawling unease was infinitely more acute. Still, if Wilkes' words were true, then they weren't exactly safe trying to hole up in the picket anyway. Toluca Prison, it seemed, was tired of playing by the rules.

Their footsteps sounded wetly down the corridor, rotten puddles of unknown nature dotting the floor. Diana frowned, thinking it smelled a lot like when you open a container that's been in the back of your fridge at least 8 months past the expiration date. Out here, it was overwhelming, and she was starting to feel grateful she'd already lost her lunch. If you could call the jerky lunch.

Suddenly, out of an open bean hole shot a tentacle that looked like it was made of raw, bloody muscle. It wrapped around her leg, and Diana went crashing to the floor. She kicked and struggled, but the thing inside was strong, and she was getting battered against the door.

"Ow, f- LET GO!" she yelled as she thrashed. Wilkes jumped forward, and, grabbing the little metal door to the bean hole, slammed it down hard on the tentacle. Whatever it was loosened its grip on her leg for just a moment, and that was just long enough for her to wiggle out of its grasp. He looked like he was about to keep beating on the thing, but she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from the door.

She shook her head, saying, "Look, as long as we stay out of reach, I think we're good. The thing looks stuck and we don't need to waste any more energy on it. Let's just get to the door. I'm ready to get out of here."

Breathing heavily, she could see him fighting to banish the fog of battle from his brain. When she could tell he had a grip on himself, she let her hand drop as if touching him burned her. Now she was even more confused. There was no doubt in her mind that Wilkes was a lowlife. She'd had him locked up in isolation more than once for grabbing a handful of her rear when she helped pass out the food trays. She didn't want to see any kind of good side to him after the way he treated her, but… he actually came to her rescue. That seemed out of character, and she didn't know how to handle it. Why would he help her instead of letting the thing beat her senseless against the wall and take her guns from her? That was just… nevermind. They needed to focus on the task at hand so she shook the thought from her mind and limped with Wilkes down the hallway.

They managed to reach the entrance to Segregation without further incident. The transformation of the door which had only been hinted at through the low quality footage from the security camera. The door was now black, and she couldn't tell if it was made of metal or some kind of stone. When she reached out to touch it, it felt not hot, but warm like the body temperature of a living creature. That in itself was enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end if they hadn't been already. A bas relief of a woman in a long gown and a diadem stood off to one side of the door, her finger extended towards a depiction of a spinning wheel on the door itself. Between the pointed spindle and the tip of her finger rested a tear-shaped indentation. An empty indentation.

"Is this… Sleeping Beauty?" she asked, taken aback. "Why… ugh. How the hell are we supposed to open it?"

"Wait a minute…," said Wilkes, sounding surprised. She turned around to look at him and saw him reaching in his pocket. Tightening her grip on the gun, she watched as he pulled something out of his pocket that glinted red in the dim light. It was a tear-shaped, blood-red jewel. When he held it up for her inspection, it looked like it would fit the indentation perfectly.

"Where did you get that?" she asked, flabbergasted.

He shrugged. "I told you, the walls and doors kept changing. I'd get out in weird places, but I always ended up back in my cell. I found this when I was out before." Wilkes reached out and placed the gem in the indentation and it settled in with a loud click. Something that looked… and smelled… disturbingly like blood started oozing out Sleeping Beauty's finger and the door swung open.

Their eyes met, and Diana gave her companion a small nod. "Let's do this," said Wilkes, and together they crept into the passage beyond.


End file.
